Table of the Day: Laffer's Revenge

The conventional wisdom around Washington is that, while cutting certain taxes (e.g., capital gains) spurs tax revenues, similar supporting evidence for personal income tax cuts is pretty flimsy.  The following chart, courtesy of Cato's Dan Mitchell, sure seems to turn that conventional wisdom on its head:

As Mitchell puts it:

The table ..., which is based on data from the IRS’s Statistics of Income, shows what happened to tax collections from upper-income taxpayers between 1980 and 1988... [T]he IRS figures clearly show that lower tax rates were followed by more rich people, more taxable income, and more tax revenue. For those keeping score at home, that’s a perfect batting average for supply-side economics

Very cool.